For their ninth studio album, Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons ditched the guest vocalists and dusted off the old-school samplers they used to craft their first two breakthrough releases, 1995’s “Exit Planet Dust” and 1997’s “Dig Your Own Hole,” reconnecting with the life-affirming sounds that helped them sell millions of records, become festival headliners and clinch four Grammys.

The electronic dance music pioneers are on the road performing a career-spanning set that packs in floor-filling classics like “Block Rockin’ Beats” and “Galvanize,” alongside exuberant new cuts like “Got to Keep On” and “Free Yourself.”

The Chronicle spoke with Simons, who took some time away from the band following the release of 2015’s “Born in the Echoes,” from his home in England.

Q: This album feels like an elixir for dark times. Where did you find the energy to make something that sounds so vibrant?A: The last three years here with Brexit have been pretty stressful and sad, because it’s seeing a lot of this kind of close-minded intolerant Englishness that has been under the carpet in the country for so long. Tom and I were really impacted by it. It’s impossible for that to not come through the music.

At the same time, we still like rave culture and being with people, so it was the meeting of those two impulses: feeling angry and disconnected. Something’s been revealed that we don’t like, but we also remember a time when there was much more a sense of togetherness. It’s all there in the music.

Q: Did you set out to make a political record?A: We never sat down to write any kind of protest record. But the two of us are alive, and that’s been the thing from the beginning — we want our music to have humanity. It wasn’t our mission to make mechanical music, strictly about the future. It’s more about where humans and machines meet.

Q: You dug out some of the same equipment that you used on your early albums. Were you trying to give yourself limitations to work within?A: We didn’t have a particular rule. I mean, we were certainly happy to use the most up-to-date synths or whatever we could, but we made this little studio within the studio with this little circle of old equipment. It wasn’t particularly harking back to anything. We just remember we liked the crunch of a particular sampler, and that became the basis for how we made the record.

Apart from using the old gear, we had an incredible, very hot summer. The previous albums have been very urban because we’ve been in this underground concrete studio in London. This is the first album that happened in Tom’s studio, which is in a beautiful part of England. When we were recording “The Universe Sent Me,” it was this beautiful, warm night and we just left the doors open while we were recording. That made just as much contribution to the sound of the album.

Q: When the Chemical Brothers started out, your music was so much of its 1990s moment. Did you realize it would have such a long shelf life?A: Not at the beginning. Because dance music fulfills such an integral part of life’s moments — when you’re with your friends or at your wedding — it becomes memorable.

When we play live, we always play the old records and people will tell us about listening to “Block Rockin’ Beats” when they were 14 and hanging out with their friends in the forest. There’s something very visceral about music that puts people back. You typically associate nostalgia with the older Baby Boomer music, like Bob Dylan or the Beatles. Now you have electronic music and rave music that brings people back to a time to when they were younger and less encumbered by the world. It’s a nice place to go in your memory.

Q: How have you negotiated your stage presence now that production values have become so big?A: The heart of the live show is our music. It’s a very cathartic experience listening to our music. You have this anger and joy and love and nostalgia.

When we used to come to San Francisco in the ’90s, it was very basic. It was a screen with Super 8 projectors. The technology has moved on, but the basic ethos is the same: to melt people’s minds and give them permission to lose themselves in the experience. The fact that people are doing it together is at the heart of it. People have left the house and are responding together. When the bass and vocal hits your heart, you can achieve anything. It’s the extraordinary impact.

Q: As you get your older, do you find it more difficult to bang away all night?A: Napping is the key. The main skill you need to build touring is to be able to nap at will. I mean, it’s very different now, the touring. There’s a lot of jogging and outdoor activities. We look after ourselves.

Q: What do you make of the way your music enters the world? You hear it everywhere from football stadiums to video games. A: It’s great that all these songs have different kinds of connotations for people. We grew up with MTV and being able to have videos and radio that was varied. So these are ways of getting people to hear this music that we labored over.

I’ve got a lot of friends who have children who are 6 or 7, and they all love “Salmon Dance” — so now we’re a kids’ band. It’s a big world out there. We’ve made a lot of music. However it gets out there is cool by us.